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now we’ve got bricks thrown into the garden of Number fifteen and a reception full of people bleating on about infringement of civil liberties and police harassment.” He kicked his desk. “And with this bloody meeting tonight—I just don’t believe it!”
    “Do you want me to remove Burkin from this inquiry?” asked Tennison quietly. She didn’t know what else to suggest.
    Kernan shook his head and gave her a sideways glance. “We can’t do that, Jane.” He took a drag. “I’m up for promotion.”
    There was a slight pause as it sank in. “Promotion?”
    “Chief Super.” Kernan cleared his throat. He’d kept this under wraps till now, hadn’t intended to tell anyone, least of all DCI Jane Tennison. “Right now I can’t afford to do my dirty washing in public,” he went on, a bit pathetically, she thought. “My interview will be a nightmare if this keeps up.”
    Tennison let a moment pass. The sly bastard wouldn’t have breathed a word if this mess with Burkin hadn’t happened. She stepped forward and said in a quiet, controlled voice, “I hope you’ll be recommending me for your post.”
    “Oh do you?” Kernan said darkly, glowering at her from under his brows. “Well, don’t take too much for granted.” More finger jabbing, as if he were trying to bore a hole through galvanized steel. “Now make sure this boy is cautioned and released and tear bloody Burkin up for arse paper!”
    Seething and trying not to show it, Tennison marched straight to her office and told her secretary, WPC Havers, to have DI Burkin report to her pronto. She wasn’t sure who she was most pissed-off with—Burkin for antagonizing the local community and trying to wreck the murder inquiry before it had even got off the ground, or Mike Kernan and his devious little schemes to get shunted up the ladder without telling her. Bloody typical, and she was fed up with it! As the senior AMIT officer under his command, she was naturally next in line for his position, and what’s more she deserved it. She’d paid her dues, eighteen months at the Reading Rape Centre, five years with the Flying Squad, and to top it all, cracking the Marlow serial killer case when the rest of the team had been flapping around like headless chickens. She was damn sure that if Kernan’s most senior officer had been male, Kernan would have been grooming him for stardom, bringing him along, even putting in a good word for him with the “board,” the panel of senior Metropolitan officers who decided these matters. But of course she was a stupid, weak woman, with half a brain, hysterical with PMS once a month, and what’s more a dire threat to the macho image that even today prevailed throughout the police force. God, it made her feel like weeping, but she wouldn’t, and didn’t.
    So she was in a fine mood for Burkin, when he appeared, and she faced him standing, even though he was a clear twelve inches taller, his bruiser’s mug showing not a trace of doubt or remorse.
    “Look, he was blatant, Guv. Almost blowing the smoke in my face, as if to say, go on, nick me.”
    “That’s not the point. At the moment, what with the Cameron case—”
    Burkin rudely interrupted. “Derrick Cameron was a criminal and he deserves to be locked up.”
    “Frank . . .” Tennison said, holding on to her temper, but Burkin barged on, as set in his ways as quick-drying concrete.
    “So we had to lean on him a little to get a confession—so what?”
    Tennison bristled. “So what? So our reputation goes down the toilet again!”
    “What reputation?” Burkin’s mouth twisted in a scathing sneer. “They bloody hate us. Well—I’ll tell you something, I ain’t so keen on them. As far as I’m concerned, one less on the streets is no loss.”
    “You’re making a fool of yourself, Frank.”
    “Look,” Burkin said stolidly, “if they don’t want to be part of our country they should go home.”
    Tennison stared up at him, her eyes glacial. “That’s